Claire’s been on iTunes again!

Claire wanted to get some music to play for Jack, to help soothe him and calm him down and all that. So, the obvious place to look was the internet, namely iTunes, as she can then buy and download any music to her iPod.

She has managed to download a heap of nursery rhymes and singable children’s songs, including several from Disney’s albums.

These are then played on a loop through the speaker set for her iPod, to the point that I probably know all of the words myself!! But Jack doesn’t seem to have any obvious objections to them. We keep looking for patterns in his crying, such as if a particular song is playing at the time, but nothing.

To be fair, the tracks that she has bought (yes, legally!) are a little random but they are very child-like and will probably get played lots more over the coming years, so on one hand, we’ll get our money’s worth from them, but on the other hand, I’m going to hear these things forever... Argh!!

Baby Centre

Since Claire fell pregnant, she has had a her head and internet browser constantly buried in the Baby Centre website (www.babycentre.co.uk), which not only provides loads of information related to babies, (focusing mainly around a forum), but the website sends out weekly emails too.

The weekly emails are bite-sized ‘teasers’ of what’s going on with your baby at each stage of the process, which are interesting enough for new dads too, but without being bombarded with too much information. The email comes through as a single paragraph of text, plus a sketched cross-section image of the mum’s belly with a baby inside. The email is very well worded, as it helps to relate to what's going on in there, either by comparing the baby's size to something you can picture (like a small fruit), or by describing how he or she is moving around, or what they should be feeling about now, etc.

Also on the email is a whole load of follow-on hyperlinks to more pages, but I tended to ignore those.

'Birth-clubs' are another part of the Baby Centre website, whereby a new mum (or dad for that point!) can register into the month of the expected birth and speak to other expectant mums, posting questions and comments about their pregnancy, problems, funny moments, etc.

I don’t think Claire’s ever felt the burning desire to contribute to the any of the forums, but she’s certainly had a good time reading it all!